Rebecca smiled. “That’s not stupid at all.”
“And what are you doing?” William asked, and then stopped himself. “If you don’t mind me asking. I mean, I thought you were supposed to be volunteering.”
“I was, but I’m taking a break. I’m praying for my patients.” Rebecca lifted her head. “I always do.”
Of course you do, William thought bitterly, and then shamed himself for thinking it.
“I’m praying for Robert Barnes in particular.” Her voice was shaky as she said it.
William wrinkled his brow. “Who’s that?”
“I told you about Robert. The patient on life support. I was talking to his parents earlier, and they asked me a very difficult question. They wanted to know whether they should take him off life support or not. I told them I’m just a volunteer, but they don’t want a doctor’s opinion. They want my opinion. His life is in my hands.”
William smirked. He knew the feeling. “And what are you planning to say?”
“I don’t know,” Rebecca said. “That’s why I’m praying on it. I’m praying for an answer. On one hand, he might come out of it. On the other hand, he might have thirty to forty years ahead of him, spent wasting away in a hospital bed. The doctors… they declared him brain dead. But, but in freak occurrences, people have come out of it.” She sighed. “I’m really scared. I don’t want to give them the wrong answer.”
William pondered this, and then placed a hand upon his waistline, upon the stone-hilted knife. He felt it. He felt that the moment was drawing near. “I think I know the answer. Are his parents with him, in his room, or is he alone?”
Rebecca shook her head. “They stepped out for a while. They’ll be back in, I don’t know, an hour? It’s not a lot of time.”
“I have a solution that can work for both of us,” he said, and stood up, offering a somber smile and his hand. “Rebecca, you won’t have to give them the wrong answer. I… I promise it.”
Rebecca took his hand, fingers slipping along the scarred sigil as she was pulled to her feet. It radiated warmth against her palm, hot and uncomfortable.
“Close the door,” William instructed, as they walked into Robert’s room. Rebecca did so. They were left to silence, save for the breathing machine that kept Robert’s lungs moving, and the steady beep of a heart monitor. Robert, meanwhile, lay in permanent slumber. He looked no more than Rebecca’s age, just a young man with a few scraggily hairs on his face, having gone unconsciously through puberty.
“I want to tell you something, Rebecca,” William said. “You might think I’m crazy, but I need to get this off of my chest before I do it. You deserve that much.”
“W-What,” Rebecca squeaked, feeling fear overtake her. “What is it?”
William turned over his hand, showed her the sigil, and ran the index finger of his other hand across it. “This wasn’t from a cigarette lighter. I made a deal with the devil. Well, not the devil himself, but a demon. A beast. Some kind of evil creature. And it wants to take my soul unless I offer it someone else’s. Someone untainted. Pure.”
“I…I don’t understand,” Rebecca stuttered, and backed against Robert’s bed. “What are you talking about? I thought you were going to help me.”
William drew the stone-hilted knife. “I am, Rebecca,” he said. “I’m helping both of us.”
In the glass paneling above the hospital bed, William saw an empty face float into view. He could also feel it smiling at him. He could feel its eagerness.
“I know you’re just a volunteer,” William said, “but can you apply pressure to a wound and bandage it up?”
“I… yes, of course I can. Why?”
William nodded. “Because I need to make sure no one gets hurt.”
He lunged forward with the knife held firmly in both hands, blade turned downward. Rebecca screamed, but the knife was not meant for her. William plunged the blade into the flesh of Robert’s stomach. He then gave it a sharp turn as he leaned forward, kissed the comatose boy upon the cheek, and pulled away.
“Now,” William barked. “Do it now, Rebecca.”
“W-Why did you do that?” she asked, as she fumbled some gauze out of a nearby drawer. She applied pressure to the wound, which was an inch long and not terribly deep, and watched as deep red soaked quickly through. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“He got into this accident when he was what, ten? Eleven?” William said, watching as the boy’s body began to convulse. “He’s pure. But more than that, he’s brain dead. No functioning part of his mind remains.”
“I don’t understand what that means,” Rebecca cried.
“It means,” said William, “that he’s a living container.”
Robert’s eyes flipped open, solid black lumps of coal set into bony sockets, and lips that hadn’t moved in ages barely twitched as a voice rose up from the pit of his stomach.
“A pure soul,” the guttural voice said. “I can feel it somewhere deep within. And yet… and yet, I cannot overtake his mind. There is nothing here. There is nothing but an empty shell. I do not understand.”
“That’s right,” William said. “An empty shell that you can’t do a goddamn thing about.”
The body continue to convulse within the bed, and Rebecca strained to remain applying pressure to the wound.
“You stupid mortal. When this soul slips away into death and I take it from him, I will come for you and I will make you suffer more than any man has ever suffered before. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”
“I fulfilled my end of the bargain,” William said, “and until this boy is dead you will remain trapped in this body like a prison. Unable to trick men with false promises and make deals you have no right making. This boy will never be yours to torture. He has no mind to take.”
Saliva began to bubble down the boy’s mouth, and the black eyes fixated down on Rebecca. “I will take the boy, and I will take you, and I will take William T. Bellows, and I will drag you to the furthest corners of eternity for your insolence, and—”
“Make it stop!” Rebecca shrieked, eyes scrunched shut as she pressed new gauze to the wound. “I’m begging you, please make it stop!”
And with that, William took the rosary from his pocket. He wrapped it around the boy’s neck, tucked it into his hospital gown, and watched as it started to burn the flesh. Robert’s eyes flipped shut, his mouth slacked, and the searing quickly halted. All that remained was a comatose boy, the beeping of the machines that kept him alive, and a very terrified young girl that was just barely slowing the blood flow of Robert’s stomach wound.
“It’s over, Rebecca,” William said, grasping the hand not focused on Robert’s gash. “And I need you to be strong. I need you to do three things for me. This is very important. Okay?”
“Y…Yes?” Rebecca squeaked.
“One, when Robert’s parents come back, I want you to tell them that they should keep their son on life support for at least five years. It’ll allow them the right opportunity for their son to awaken without making him suffer. Tell them that you went to the chapel, you prayed, and you received a vision that told you his life here on earth was right now serving a much greater purpose than it ever could if he was allowed to pass. This is not a lie.”
Rebecca sniffled. “O…okay.”
“Two, tell them that this rosary is a good luck charm. It doesn’t matter if they’re Catholic or not. That has nothing to do with it. Tell them that as soon as you put it on him, it stirred a reaction from him. This is also not a lie.”
“Yes. Yes, okay.”
William sighed. “And three, don’t ever speak about this experience again. Don’t think about it. Drive it from your memory. Keep living your life. Just know that what we did today is for the good of the many, and so very many lives are being saved because of this.” William felt a tear at the corner of his eye. “Mine included.”
“What…” Rebecca nearly choked on her own words. “What… what if Robert comes out of this?”
“Rebecca, you’re a sweet girl,” William said. “But the doctors declared him brain dead, didn’t they? What do you think’s going to happen?”
Rebecca nodded, and then without warning crumbled into William’s arms. He pulled her close to him, embraced her, and wept with her. When he glanced down at his hand, he saw that the sigil was gone, as was any trace that it had ever been in his skin. Rebecca saw this as well, and fresh tears continued to fall from her cheeks.
Soon after, William helped her clean up Robert’s now-clotted wound and apply a bandage, and then helped put him into a new hospital gown. William stuffed the old, bloodied gown into the furthest depths of the trash can.
With that, he bid Rebecca goodbye and told her he’d see her at the office on Monday. He also gave her his cell phone number in case she needed to talk. He then reassured her that what she did was the right thing and that the demon would never bother her. If it somehow managed to escape, it would only come for him. She gave a weak nod as she slurped back more tears with a loud snort.
William walked out of the room, and gave a bewildered laugh as he imagined the feeling of going home to his family and only his family. But first he stopped into the restroom, which was bright and empty and silent, and splashed cold water on his face to see if he was merely dreaming. He was not, and when he uttered another bewildered laugh, nothing came to taunt him in the mirror. Nothing spoke to him, not even as he gave a hearty “fuck you” to the empty space behind his reflection and pulled open the door.
On his way out, as William passed by the chapel, he heard Rebecca’s voice. He thought she was calling out to him, until he glanced back behind him and saw her talking to a man and a woman in the north ward waiting room. Tears were still in her eyes as she told Robert’s parents, “I have the most wonderful news for you.”
*
Six years later, in the same quiet room in the north ward of St. John’s Medical Center, Thomas and Jennifer Barnes wept as their son Robert was pulled off of life support. When the beeping machines became one solid, droning cry, the doctors excused themselves and left Robert’s parents to grieve. Jennifer Barnes remove the rosary from Robert’s neck, kissed it gently, and put it into her purse. Her son’s soul was finally released from its prison, and part of that brought her comfort. Unbeknownst to her, however, a demon was also freed from her son’s lifeless body.
*
Across town, in a Volvo that was only slightly newer, William T. Bellows drove his teenage daughter Lynette to her first day of high school. Dana, meanwhile, was going to college in New York, and Grace, having quit her menial office job to take up her love of craft making, was at home. The conversation between father and daughter was a cheerful one, as William asked his daughter about her classes and she assured him they were going well.
And so neither of them noticed as the demon slipped casually into the backseat, glaring at William in the rearview mirror with a fiery rage that would have scored his eyes, had he been capable of actually seeing the demon. But as the contract was long since fulfilled, William could not see him. Nor could Lynette. No, the demon that had waited six long years was now completely alone and unable to touch, speak to, or harm William T. Bellows, and rather than seeking out fresh, new souls, the demon sought vengeance of his own—the same angry, thoughtless, blind revenge that William once sought out in a bathroom mirror on a very desperate night.
The demon’s only hope, as he sat watching the two converse, was that Lynette might one day reach out to him in anger. That she might one day call out to him the way her father had. It was the only way the demon could ever hope to retaliate against the man who had gotten the better of him.
And so the demon sat, and waited, and wished for the moment to come when Lynette summoned him out of anger.
It seemed the demon had forgotten his own words, some six years ago, when he once told a very desperate man to wish in one hand and defecate in the other.
The Graveyard Shift (pt. II)
Leonard lifted his bloodshot eyes to regard the dingy plywood walls of the caretaker’s shed. He set his fourth empty can of Hamm’s next to its brethren, standing atop the micro fridge like hollow offerings on a shrine to the gods of on-the-clock inebriation. The sun was barely starting to creep along the horizon, something he noticed from the shack’s single window. Meanwhile, the storm was still slogging along. Outside the thin walls of the shack, Leonard heard the patter of rainfall, along with the constant pulses of wind that had not yet gotten tired of pushing the tiny shed around.
Leonard looked to the book again and licked his cracked lips. He was surprised that Mr. William T. Bellows had managed to craftily save his damned soul. He was even a little disappointed.
Leonard snorted. He had read almost half the book in a single sitting, which was probably more reading than he’d gotten done in the last thirty years combined. But unfortunately, his extended break did not lead to a break in the rainfall. It seemed there would be no relief for poor Leonard, and rain or not, that grave wasn’t going to dig itself.
Leonard shut the cover of the blood-spattered book (it was blood, he felt sure of now) and tossed it carelessly back onto its high shelf. After reaching for the ceiling—stretching his bent spine momentarily erect with a series of unnatural pops—he pulled on his now dry socks, slipped into his shit-kickers, and picked up his hat and shovel.
The steel door slammed shut behind Leonard as he slumped out into the wet, foggy graveyard.
Even as rain pelted him in the near darkness, with only the faintest rays of sunlight creeping over the horizon, he quickly spied something in the ground: a hole. This wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary, especially for a graveyard, had it actually been dug by Leonard. But it had not. The hole he needed to dig by shift’s end, the hole he’d been dreading digging in such awful weather, laid wide open before him, like the earth’s gaping maw, filled with a pool of water that had been collecting rain.
It seemed this hole had been here a while.
“What the fuck?” Leonard asked, and let out a laugh. “Seems today is my lucky day.”
He took a cautious step forward and leaned in for a peek. Unfortunately, his caution did him no favors and his boots skidded easily on the muddy grass beneath him. He tumbled down into the fresh grave, landed with an obnoxiously loud splash, and flailed his arms as he tried to pull himself up. His first instinct was to grab for the dirt alongside him, but all he grabbed was slick mud, and a cascading wall of wet earth fell in upon him. The rain intensified, thunder clapped far off in the distance, and the dirt continued to collapse all around him in a muddy torrent.
*
Two hours later, when the rain had finally stopped, Leonard’s supervisor, Tom, arrived and was disappointed to find that not only had Leonard only half finished digging the new grave, but he had dug it in the wrong spot. What’s more, Leonard was nowhere to be found, which was unusual since his shift wasn’t supposed to be up for another hour.
Tom walked into the caretaker’s shed, where he found four empty beer cans laying discarded on top of the mini-fridge that was supposed to be for soda only. With a sigh, he concluded that Leonard must have spent his entire shift getting drunk. He then rushed to dig a grave last minute—drunkenly, in the wrong spot—and then quit, having decided the job to not be cut out for him.
Unfortunately, this was not unusual in Tom’s cemetery, as Leonard was the fourth man in the past three months to just up and leave during his shift without a word. The one before Leonard, what was his name? John? James? He had only lasted two days. At least Leonard lasted two weeks.
And so Tom got into the backhoe, spent his morning filling in Leonard’s drunken mistake, and then dug the new grave in its proper location. After he was done he cleaned up Leonard’s mess in the shed, went to his office, and posted a job listing for a new overnight caretaker and gravedigger.
Tom hired a new man in only three days—someone younger, someone slightly more enthusiastic about the job. And soon
, Leonard was forgotten.
Men like Leonard always are.
Authors’ Note
Thanks for reading, folks. We hope you liked the book. It’s a pretty big deviation from the humor stuff we usually write, but we had a blast putting these stories together.
Just to clarify, while the majority of this novel was a close collaboration, a handful of the stories were individually authored by either one of us. The stories An Axe Through Bone and Into the Vortex were both penned solo by Bryan, while the stories Life and Limb and Fare Thee Well were both Brandon’s.
The rest of the tales in this collection, however, were co-authored, with minimal threats, harassment, coercion, or wanton bloodshed between the two collaborators.
And just because we thought it would be fun, here’s a quick bit of backstory on the origins of each of the five major stories.
Bedridden Honeymoon: This story was inspired by the real life account of Carl Tanzler, AKA Count Carl von Cosel, who was so in love with a dead teenage girl by the name of Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos that he vowed to marry her, even after she died of tuberculosis. In fact, she told him this from beyond the grave, and according to him, she talked to him constantly in both English and Spanish even though she was dead. After the funeral, he stole her corpse from its mausoleum and lived with it for seven whole years before being discovered by police. Go ahead, look it up. The saying is very cliché, but sometimes truth is definitely stranger than fiction.
An Axe Through Bone: Our good friend Andrew Leon dared Bryan to write a story set in his world, a world you can find in his The House on the Corner series (look it up!), specifically the garage apartment and its Imagination Room. The result is Bryan’s own character, Robb, taking trips into this room to escape his own grim reality, who ultimately sacrifices his own life to save the lives of the series’ main characters. You’re totally welcome, Andrew!
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